Test for Modi as India’s biggest state votes

Millions of voters in Uttar Pradesh cast their ballots on Saturday in an election seen as a key test for Narendra Modi halfway through his first term as prime minister.

People queue to cast their vote during the state assembly election, in the village of Kairana, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, February 11, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

Muzaffarnagar, India // Millions of voters in India’s most populous state cast their ballots on Saturday in an election seen as a key test for Narendra Modi halfway through his first term as prime minister.

Uttar Pradesh is home to more than 200 million people and polls in the battleground state are a bellwether of national politics.

This election is seen as a referendum on Mr Modi’s controversial scrapping of on high-denomination banknotes. The surprise move was aimed at combating tax evasion by the rich but hit poor rural communities hard.

Uttar Pradesh voted overwhelmingly for Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 general election, powering him to victory over the Congress party that has dominated Indian politics since independence.

But now the BJP faces a major challenge from the northern state’s youthful and charismatic chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who has tapped into the pain from Mr Modi’s cash ban to try and swing the state his way.

“Modi must answer the people. His credibility will come into question, and that is why he is panicking,” Mr Yadav said on Saturday.

“This result is going to give him a big jolt.”

Voting will be staggered over several weeks, with results out on March 11, and pollsters put the BJP neck and neck with an alliance of Mr Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and the Congress party.

The Congress, whose 46-year-old likely next leader Rahul Gandhi has campaigned alongside Mr Yadav, desperately needs a win after a dismal performance in 2014.

Both Mr Modi and Mr Gandhi – scion of the family that has dominated the Congress party for generations – have their seats in Uttar Pradesh, underscoring the importance of the electorally pivotal state.

Observers say Mr Modi will be judged in part on his shock decision in November to take 86 per cent of India’s currency out of circulation, leaving many without the means to buy essentials in the cash-dependent economy.

“There will also be other factors at play in these state polls, but Modi’s BJP will be judged in comparison to its performance in the state in 2014,” said Ashok Malik, a fellow with the think tank Observer Research Foundation.

With so much at stake halfway through his term, Mr Modi has personally led the campaigning for his party instead of relying on a local face.

He urged voters to partake in the “huge festival of democracy”, while painting his opponents as enablers of Uttar Pradesh’s notoriously corrupt elites.

“Criminals rule the roost in UP. There is so much lawlessness all around,” he said in a speech on Saturday, referring to the state by its popular acronym.

The first phase saw a high turnout, with roughly half the 26 million voters eligible in this round casting a ballot by mid afternoon, the election commission of India said.

Extra women’s-only polling stations were set up to encourage female voters to the ballot box.

There were no major disturbances reported, and extra security deployed at hotspots like Muzaffarnagar, where soldiers guarded the western district’s nearly 900 polling booths.

The memory of Hindu-Muslim violence in 2013 that left at least 50 people dead and thousands displaced was fresh in the minds of some voters as they headed to the ballot box.

“We don’t want a repeat of the riots. All we want is peace,” said Mohammed Shahid, 60, as he voted in Muzaffarnagar.

In Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, young voters complained about the shoddy roads, power cuts and poor sanitation in the overcrowded state.

“One of the seven wonders of the world is here but there’s been hardly any economic development,” said Aastha Chaturvedi, a 22-year-old voting for the first time.

* Agence France-Presse